In the report, Zarwan outlines comparisons of processor power consumption, chemistry and water use, treatment and disposal across different types of CTP plate technologies, including thermal and violet plates, conventional and reduced-chemistry processors, and the various different versions of processless and chemistry-free plates.

The report has some interesting findings, and is certainly a good starting point for any firm wanting to see how its current platemaking procedures impact the environment and what improvements might be made. One of the surprises is the high energy consumption of the finishing unit needed by Fuji's Pro-V chemistry-free violet plate, which consumes as much energy in use as the processor needed for Agfa's silver-based processed violet plate LAP-V.

My light-bulb moment came when I recalled ECRM's promotion of its violet CTP platesetter that was lower energy and, therefore, emitted less CO2 than rival devices. Violet platesetter makers have long used the argument that their machines use less power than thermal to add a green tinge to their marketing. But they don't mention that while there may be lower energy consumption to expose a violet plate, it may require a higher input of energy to process some violet plates than thermal ones.

Neither Zarwan nor ECRM, however, look at the end-to-end impact of platesetting. Zarwan's report doesn't include platesetter energy requirements as part of the platemaking process, and ECRM doesn't consider the total power requirement for platemaking in its own marketing materials.

Minimising impact
Any firm that cares about minimising the overall environmental impact of their platemaking needs to include both CTP exposure and plate processing/developing in their calculations. Zarwan reports average monthly power consumption in KWh for plate processing, while ECRM provides a basic power rating of its machines in watts. Other CTP vendors, even if they do provide any easy-to-access specifications on their websites list just voltage and current specifications.
However, a peak power rating isn't the same as the actual day-to-day power consumption in use figure. At this stage, all I can do is point out that if you are tempted to green up your platemaking then there is a need to consider the exposure and development processes together, as a system, rather than separately to make the wisest decisions.

As the environmental bandwagon rolls on, it will become increasingly important to take a systems approach to improved sustainability to ensure that focusing on improving performance in one area doesn't introduce further problems further along the line.

This pre-press example shows just how fraught it can be to do the right thing. There is always the potential for knock-on effects and unintended consequences, even when you are looking at a simple system that consists of two interdependent machines that sit adjacent to each other in one department. One thing is clear: when it comes to picking the greenest processes for platemaking, no one is going to hand you the answer on a plate.